Power plant down for 6 weeks

Sunday

Sep 8, 2013 at 10:25 AMSep 8, 2013 at 10:25 AM

Don Reiddwreid@aol.com

LITCHFIELD — The massive, 55-megawatt (MW) generator core and the turbine from the coal-fired Endicott steam power plant owned by Michigan South Central Power Agency (MSCPA) are on the road to North Carolina for maintenance and repair during a scheduled six-week outage. While Endicott is down the agency members — Coldwater, Hillsdale, Union City, Marshall and Clinton — will receive power from contracts, Prairie State coal plant in Illinois and the AMP natural gas plant in Ohio. The outage was scheduled during one of the lowest power demand times of the year.The agency also is now getting the output of two hydro dams along the Wisconsin border, which generated 4.45 MW at a fixed price this month.MSCPA General Manager Glen White said this is the first time since the early 1980s the generator had been removed from the plant. It will be rewound. “It’s had 30 years operation. It’s time to rework it,” he said. “One of the advantages of shipping both pieces down is that when they get the new parts on they will be able to do a synchronized balancing there easier than here.”White said the $5 million repair is scheduled every seven years as routine maintenance. The plant will be back on line in mid-October “unless we find something strange when we open it up,” White said.The MSCPA board of trustees saw an analysis of the plant’s heat generation since the last overhaul, which showed efficiency diminishing over time.Local staff will perform other plant maintenance during the six weeks.A new 6-inch natural gas line is being extended into the plant through Litchfield to provide more power and reliability to light the plant’s coal burners. Also to be ready with new modifications when operations restart is the rubber tire distillation system, which was developed to partially fuel the generator. The agency bought the prototype system from developer Symbiotic Energy in July for $10 million. Estimates project it will pay back the cost in just over three years in reduced coal fuel costs.MSCPA agreed to a new two-year coal supply contract from P-M Coal in southeast Ohio. The current price of $53 a ton will go up $1 each year for the next two years.White said he is negotiating with trucking companies to reduce trucking costs by $2 a ton by transshipping near the Ohio border. Trucks would bring loads of coal to a location in Ohio where it would then be double-trucked into Michigan, which has higher load limits at a savings to the agency.Auditors Baker Tilly gave MSCAP the highest “unmodified” opinion of its books for the fiscal year, which ended June 30, in a report presented Thursday.